After a lengthy search, State Street has appointed a country head for Australia as part of a progressive restructure designed to move away from a business unit focus to a more holistic approach.
Tim Helyar has been recruited from J.P. Morgan, where he has spent the past 18 years, most recently as head of fund services product for Australia and New Zealand. He starts in the new position next month.
State Street has also recruited Kevin Hardy for the Singapore office as head of that country and Southeast Asia. He was most recently the general manager of a ‘wealthtech’ firm, additive, and is a previous Singapore country head for BlackRock.
Both Helyar and Hardy report to Mostapha Tahiri, State Street’s chief executive officer for Asia Pacific. Tahiri said last week (October 20) that the changes started with the appointment, in 2019, of 30-year State Street veteran Andrew Erickson, another Australian, as chief executive for international, ex-North America, as well as chief productivity officer.
They were designed to empower the leadership for greater accountability for all of State Street’s servicing businesses, with country heads being the next step – first in Europe and then Asia Pacific over the past year.
The new structure fits well with the rapid growth of State Street’s ‘front-to-back’ asset servicing offerings, under the Alpha brand, which involve an open-architecture use of a multitude of front, middle and backoffice systems and processes.
The front-to-back trend, evident among the other big global asset servicing banks as well, has transformed the position of custodians in the asset management value chain within the past few years.
Tahiri reports to both Erickson, who is based in Hong Kong, and Francisco Aristeguieta, the chief executive for State Street Institutional Services, who was the previous chief executive for international.
Also last week, UBS Asset Management confirmed former BlackRock executive, Alison Telfer, as country head for Australia and NZ.
She takes over the role next January from John Mowatt, who was appointed in an interim capacity this May. Mowatt will resume as UBS Asset Management head of real estate in January.
Telfer has spent eight years at the Australian arm of global investment powerhouse BlackRock, most recently multi-tasking as chief operating officer, general counsel and head of public policy.
Previously, she served eight years in senior legal and product development positions at Challenger.
BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, has recently secured a few major mandates in Australasia including almost $10 billion from AMP wealth NZ along with two huge deals for Commonwealth Bank of Australia subsidiaries – namely, A$15 billion for Colonial First State and a NZ$20 billion investment advisory gig with ASB.
Earlier this month, the NZ Superannuation Fund revealed UBS would manage a new passive equities mandate, initially valued at about $5 billion. UBS also runs some of the AMP Capital passive money.
Meanwhile, the $15 billion Milford Asset Management has boosted its NZ shares team after hiring Jeremy Hutton from local private equity player, Pioneer Capital.
Hutton joins Milford as a NZ equities analyst. He was a senior investment analyst at Pioneer in a role that involved managing several companies in the portfolio and helping originate deals.
Milford has an investment team of about 30, headed by the Sydney-based Wayne Gentle.
Elsewhere, the fund back-office specialist group, Calastone, has appointed three senior staff in its London-based leadership team including: Ahsan Raza as chief financial officer; Varun Atre, head of product; and, Paul Elflain to the newly created head of distributed market infrastructure (DMI) sales.
According to a Calastone release: “Each of these hires brings vast experience in financial services, fintech, and technology, to support Calastone in the next stage of its growth, as it continues to expand its leadership providing technology solutions to global funds organisations.”
Calastone provides fund messaging and other back-office services to a range of global firms including many investment managers and platforms in Australia and NZ.
Julien Hammerson, Calastone chief, said in the statement that the three “strategic hires” would help the firm as the funds market entered the next phase of digitially driven growth.
“The funds industry is facing pressure to innovate and digitally transform with an increasing need to provide better experience and value to investors. We aim to support the industry through its digital transformation by combining the best technology with the connectivity of our global network.”